Member Contribution

Date:  15 March 2007

Timor-Leste is the world's newest nation, and as such has the world's youngest national political system. This makes for a steep learning curve with forging a nation never being an easy task, as seen by the events in Timor over its recent history. Now our Labor party has decided to take a more active role in supporting Timor-Leste.

The ALP has received funding from the APPD program, a program designed to assist the major Australian political parties in promoting strong and robust democracies in the Asia Pacific region through activities with political parties. As a first step our party had a delegation travel to Timor-Leste in December, meeting with numerous political parties to gauge their interest in working with the ALP. Their interest and thirst for knowledge was immense - especially given the strong connections between Australia and Timor-Leste that already exist.

This time I was back in Timor to get our first project underway. This project is to update a guide to all the Timorese Political Parties - their history, policy, structures and people. Strangely this had only been done once in 2001 and was in dire need of relevant and current information. This should provide extremely useful to Timorese given the lack of political information available and the upcoming general election in August. Together, our party and the Timorese parties have identified many other ways we can work together and these should become reality later in the year.

Political parties are the engine room of a democracy. They are where the big picture ideas are formed and where the political vision emanates from. In working together with parties in Timor-Leste, both our party and those in Timor will benefit as we gain each others knowledge and trust, working together for a stronger future for both our countries.

Gavin Ryan

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